Everyman & Seventh Seal Comparison

Every November 6th 2012 Comparison Between Dramatic Works Everyman and Seventh Seal The fifteenth century play Everyman explores the journey of a man, who represents the individuals of mankind, who is confronted by the inevitability of his own death. Very similarly, Antonius Block is portrayed during the fourteenth century bubonic plague, and is confronted by death on reoccurring occasions. During the events of the two dramatic pieces, the two protagonists visit many similar and different circumstances while figuring out solutions to their crisis. It is clear that historically, t has had an impact on the outcomes of the play. First of all, it is intended to be clear that morality is inducted as a major aspect of the plays. In Everyman, an ordinary man is made to face his duty in life. His confrontation comes from a dialogue with Death to distinguish if he is ready to die. Of course, â€Å"thou comest when I had thee least in mind,† and he is not ready. Everyman seeks camarader ie on a dangerous journey, but is abandoned by allegorical figures like Goods, Knowledge, Kindred etc. He soon finds out the only thing that remains areGood Deeds, and that is the only important thing to be accepted into the Kingdom of Heaven. In Bergman’s Seventh Seal, Antonius Block is visited by Death in a form of a chess game, which was inspired by the painting,Taby Kyrka. Both plays foreshadow their inevitable death as it is being delayed by the protagonists to provide one last good measure. For instance, Everyman understands he is going to die, he just wanted to provide one last deed to cleanse his soul, and Antonius understands it as well, but he is just delaying it. In the end both provide their promise as Everyman is ready to die, andAntonius knocks over the pieces so Jof and Mia could escape death, as he accepts his own. Secondly, the historical context has had a major role on the development on both plays. In Everyman’s case, it was written in the late 15th century which deals with; the Fall of Constantinople, the 100 years war, and the Great Fall, which would all follow into Christian Humanism. This attitude influenced the Western European society and people started writing more about God, and the human perception on afterlife. Morality in the play is shown to convey a Christian message and shows him rying to save his soul to reach salvation, and promote the sacraments to others. During this time period Christians believed they had some responsibility and control over the afterlife. Catholics were mainly trying to promote what’s important and forget about the superficial items on Earth. On the other hand, Seventh Seal is referred to the Book of Revelation, and it’s stated in the film, â€Å"And when the Lamb had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour† (Revelation 8:1). Seventh Seal was a Swedish film shot in 1957 set during the Black Death and is portrayed in a very cc urate way. The story is mainly supposed to represent four recipes for catastrophe which include death, famine, war, and plague, which is evidently shown throughout the progression of the play. When Antonius is confronted by Death, he challenges him to a chess game to delay the inevitable. This helps represent mans endless conflict with God as we struggle with not important goods. It shows people dying of the plague and people giving themselves up as a way to repent because of their incapability to believe in God Both plays are portraying an overall theme that shows everyone will soon come to their demise, it is mportant that we focus on what is important to achieve salvation, and forget what isn’t to avoid obstacles. We are surrounded by temptations materialistic goods, but that is only temporary happiness. People must strive for overall happiness for the eternal life. Both plays strongly present this in an accurate manner, share a very similar theme, while showing death can appear in different ways. Death does not make its presence known in reality, but it does come to everyone and different fashions randomly, therefore the only things Catholics can do is prepare for judgement.

Key Problems and Issues Facing Hong Kong

Contemporary Tourism Issues Topic: TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE TOURISM – KEY PROBLEMS AND ISSUES FACING HONG KONG Introduction Unquestionably, Hong Kong is a blessed land where possesses prosperity and most of the elements of being a world class cosmopolitan which has successfully attracted visitors over years, especially from the mainland by emphasising our world-class shopping, dining and other urban attractions (Lam, H. , 2004).Despite the flourishing scene of the tourism industry, the volatile tourist markets and growing competition from Southeast Asian countries and neighbouring destinations have posed new challenges to Hong Kong’s tourism industry. In order to strengthen Hong Kong’s position as a preferable Asian tourist destination, in recent years, Hong Kong government has started paying more attentions to sustainable tourism due to the rising environmental consciousness worldwide and tourists’ growing interests in the new forms of tourism, namely Eco-tour ism and Cultural Tourism.Projects and campaigns, such as the development of Hong Kong Wetland Park, the launch of â€Å"Cultural Kaleidoscope† and â€Å"Nature Kaleidoscope† experience programmes, and publishing tour guidebooks- â€Å"Discover Hong Kong Nature† and â€Å"Discover Hong Kong by Rail† were introduced to promote green tourism and cultural tourism (GovHK, 2009). These promotion schemes have been launched with the aim to sustain the tourism industry by diversifying the tourism products to cater to the changing and diverse needs of inbound tourist market.Despite the development is on track of continued growth which has aroused tourists’ interests to look at â€Å"the other sides† of Hong Kong, many issues are needed to take into consideration due to the complex nature of sustainable tourism and the large number of stakeholders involved in. There is criticism from public that throughout these schemes, little attention has been paid to develop the tourism as a whole and a truly sustainable one since the schemes are still carried out in a loose manner without a thorough policy. The most significant issues are environmental ustainability and cultural sustainability due to the most recent focus of government on these issues and their importance to the sustainable development. Environmental Sustainability Country parks and nature reserves make up 40 percent of Hong Kong's total land area of some 1,100 square kilometres (Ling, 2007). Regarding the relative ample resources and the initial success of Wetland Parks, Hong Kong government recognized the green potential in Hong Kong tourism and has aggressively proposed numbers of Green initiatives recently, such as the Lantau North Country Park and Marine Park, Geoparks as well as cycle tracks and mountain bike trails.However, regarding these proposed projects, inadequate concerns have been given to the carrying capacity of these natural resources as well as the cost of construction. It is found that the conservational practices are not carried out in a strict manner as a case in Kam Tin Wetland and Hoi Ha Wan marine reserve, which are two well-known ecological attractions in Hong Kong, were reported in suffering wastage problems (Cheung, 2006).Another typical example is a member of Advisory Council on the Environment opposed to the proposal of Lantau North Country Park concerning the development of transport linkage of Tung Chung Road would damage the ecology of the areas. It aroused conservationists’ concern that government’s overemphasis on bringing in the tourist dollars will keep tourist agencies and residents focused on generating large-scale projects but putting little concern on making low-impact sustainable tourism (Crets, 2006).From the projects being carried out or proposed, it shows government’s interests on large scale investment but not much effort and support given to the details, such as the carrying capacity of the ecological resources. It implies government emphasized on the profit making and lacked of a whole-heartedly attitudes towards sustainable tourism. There is no doubt that green tourism has a large potential to become one of the major tourism sectors in Hong Kong with its educational and sustainable meaning as well as the economic benefits resulted from the rising awareness of this market.However, sustainability should not put mainly on the economic side since sustainability of tourist attractions, i. e. , the ecological sites and the heritage, is the core value of sustainable tourism. Although the government claimed that it has been keen on â€Å"promoting green tourism in Northeast New Territories and outlying islands having regard to the principles of nature conservation and sustainable development. (GovHK, 2009), it is doubtful that, regarding its policy on green tourism, whether Hong Kong government has a clear and accurate vision for mass tourism that will incorporate the natural environment. Tourism should be regarded as a tool for ecological and heritage preservation but not the other way round, otherwise there is no true meaning of sustainable tourism. Apparently, there is still much room for improvement regarding the policy as more concern and control should be placed over the environmental sustainability so as not to override the economic sustainability on the environmental sustainability.The success of green tourism is largely dependent on effectiveness of government on planning and management to minimize the impact to environment and the effective distribution of ecological resources. One of the measures suggested to the government is to have strict control on the environmental conservations instead of focusing on constructing more attractions and promoting the markets. The carrying capacity of the green attractions should be carefully studied and controlled by imposing strict regulations on the visitor numbers and their behaviours.Besides, du e to the rising demand, eco-guides’ demand is stretching, thus setting legal standards for eco-guides as well as providing training for nurturing the expertise are in urgent needs to cope with the stretched demand as well as to educate the appropriate behaviours in the ecologist attractions (Chong, 2007). Cultural Sustainability Due to the diversification in Hong Kong’s culture which is positioned as East-meet-West, Hong Kong has been recently facing the demands of constructing an identity reflected in choices about what heritage to conserve and how to present it (Henderson, 2002).With the current trend of globalization and mass movement of people, issues of cultural identity and cultural preservation continue to be explored. Recently, Hong Kong has been keen on developing attractions to enhance Hong Kong’s cultural image, one of the fine examples is the proposed cultural venues, the West Kowloon Cultural District. Besides building new cultural venues, preservin g and promoting Hong Kong’s tangible and intangible heritage are accounted as other measures to showcase Hong Kong’s mixed culture.Examples like preservation and development of the former Marine Police Headquarters in Tsim Sha Tsui into a tourism facility by the private sector, â€Å"1881 Heritage†, and HKTB’s promotion of traditional Chinese customs and festivals such as the Tin Hau Festival parade in Yuen Long and Cha Kwo Ling, Tam Kung Festival in Shaukeiwan, the Cheung Chau Bun Festival and the Birthday of Lord Buddha celebrations at Po Lin Monastery. Despite these efforts, several problems are found regarding Hong Kong’s culture and heritage sustainability policy.It is found that Hong Kong has been relatively slow in developing its potential heritage sites into tourist attractions, as seen in the controversy over the fate of Tiger Balm Garden and the Central Police Station. According to Chu and Uebegang (2002), the sluggish and passive respons e of government reflects the lack of political will due to a lack of understanding of the principles of heritage and its potential. The Government believes heritage conservation should be driven by tourism and economics and not treated in the same way as other social and education services.Even with the setting up of Heritage Tourism Task Force which is established in 1998, there have been very few recommendations proposed by the task force. Some critics have blamed on its lack of leadership and lack of influence in the government bureaucracy (Chu and Uebegang, 2002). Other problems implied in the policy of government are lack of a broad-based, long-term conservation policy, lack of a clear priorities and inadequate co-ordination of government departments involved in present heritage conservation practice.Besides, in most cultural heritage development, public involvement in decision-making is absent. Regarding these problem, it is essential for government to change its attitude and strike for a more holistic vision and policy towards the cultural heritage conservation. It is due to the challenge faced by Hong Kong that it has long promoted its culture as an exciting fusion of East-meet-West and traditional-meet-contemporary, which may cause it falling in a danger of overemphasizing on international style attractions and a loss of actual distinctiveness.Development may follow a common path to create uniform of tourism features which convey similar image to the tourists. Therefore, the cultural and heritage conservations are essential in the tourism development as it helps to maintain a unique sense of place and difference as intrinsic merit to secure its competitive advantages and reposition the image besides an international metropolitan with the colonial history. Apart from these problems of fragmented policy and vision, the management issue of the cultural heritage has been another concern by the conservationist and researchers.Since the cultural and heritag e tourism requires a cautious approach with sensitivity, research, and community involvement due to its core value is to convey the value to and engage present generations without betraying the spirit of the previous generations’ experiences. It is important and beneficial to involve the participation of those people and groups who are most closely related to the significance of the heritage area. Without this, it is difficult to achieve substantive conservation. In Hong Kong, there is lack of cooperation with and involvement of the locals or the significant cultural group.It is, therefore, suggested to involve the local community at the planning and operation level which can enhance the sustainability of the projects as well as prevent the problem of being too commercialized which affecting the authenticity and integrity of the heritage. Referring to the need of involvement of local community, certain level of empowerment is essential which can be regarded as community based tourism. It broadly described as â€Å"responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and sustains the well-being of local people. It requires tourism activities to be primarily developed and operated by members of the local community and that revenues from tourism remain within the local community. Respect for local culture, heritage and traditions is imperative. CBT teaches the visitor to behave responsibly and respectfully towards nature and native culture, and offers activities that give the visitor an understanding and appreciation of the area without degrading it. Most importantly of all, it can reserve the sustainable resources and reduce the impacts to the community daily life at the minimum level.Conclusion Tourism is most ideally suited to adopt sustainability as a guiding philosophy in sustainable developmemnt (McKercher, 2003). However, mismanaging sustainable tourism will turn it into a curse as it will damage the ecological and heritage attraction s in more direct ways. According to McKercher (2003), sustainable tourism is built around four pillars of tourism, namely economic sustainability, ecological sustainability, cultural sustainability and local sustainability, all these four elements must be addressed if we are to achieve sustainable tourism.It is found that recently Hong Kong government is striking for sustainable tourism, however, there is a lack of broad view and holistic policy to support the efforts. Unregulated short-term initiatives which serve the narrow interests of powerful forces in the industry may jeopardize the sustainability and longer-term tourism potential of many communities upon which majority interests are based (Brohman, 1996). It is therefore important for government to be aware of the future planning must be holistic, strategic and long-term.Laws, procedures and systems for planning, preservation, development and management should be adjusted or created to ensure that the development of the proje ct is undertaken in ways that are consistent with the principles of sustainability. Besides, all these should be applied to a culture of caring for the environment, therefore the concepts of preservation and sustainable development should be fostered and encouraged within the government and the community so as to ensure the true and holistic meaning of sustainable tourism.

Teaching Paper - Nursing Considerations for Teaching Patient hope to Research

Teaching - Nursing Considerations for Teaching Patient hope to deal with Type 2 Diabetes, Hypertension and Renal Disease - Research Paper Example Since hypertension and type II diabetes is caused by eating habits and lifestyle issues, health teachings should include proper meal plan which focuses on consistent and regulated intake of the following: (1) calories and carbohydrates based on the patient’s age, gender, body weight, and height; (2) vitamins; (3) minerals; (4) increased fiber; (5) low sodium diet; and (6) moderate sugar depending on the patient’s blood glucose level. It is equally important to encourage the patient to lessen or stop the habit of smoking (nicotine), drinking of alcohol, and avoid stressful situations which could lead to the increase of blood pressure (Johnson, 2004, p. 432). Instead of Depending on the patient’s age, nurses should consider the patient’s physical maturation, cognitive abilities, and psychosocial development when conducting health teaching (Habel, 2007). Although the patient is well-educated and prefers all learning styles; the nurse should always consider the age factor and readiness to learn. Since the patient is 65-year old, there is a possibility that the patient is experiencing learning barrier related to loss of hearing. In this case, the nurse should consider the idea of allowing the patient to read the health-related materials. The patient’s readiness to learn is an important factor behind the success of nurse’s health teachings. In case the patient is not interested in learning due to physical discomfort such as pain, the nurse should take more time to teach the patient health information in short details. Pertinent to the patient’s health condition, nursing diagnosis may include high random blood glucose levels of more than 200 mg/dL due to type II diabetes (Johnson, 2004, p. 286). For chronic renal failure, nursing diagnosis will include excessive fluid volume caused by sodium and water retention (decreasing the patient’s urine output) (Johnson, 2004, p. 677). To prove that allowing the patient to read nurse’s health

Academic differences Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Academic differences - Essay Example In regard to various factors that promote learning, it is evident that the standard in Umass Lowell is relatively better than my former school. It is also worth to note that age factor is important in explaining the differences observed. A comparative personal assessment in terms of effort put towards private study shows a big difference between my current learning and previous school. Back in Emirates National School I put very little effort towards studying since I simply attended classes and after that went back home to have fun with age mates. Even in the evening I could not spare some time to go through my notes and refresh my mastery of the class work unless there was a test. This could be explained by my childish mentality which had little knowledge of the importance of learning. Besides, workload was very small that I had little stress over homework and possible underperformance at the end of the term. In Umass Lowell, it is a different case since I am virtually occupied throughout the week. I am committed to attaining and maintain better results, and this means I revise my class work every day and preview notes for the next class. I am now aware of the significance of my education and am focused to achieve the highest available grade. In Umass Lowell, I lack time to relax as I used to do in my former school since my studying schedule is tight till into the night. It is worth noting that in my former school, competition was low as most of us took learning for granted and had not learnt of the significance of private study. In my current school, the opposite is true since competition is very stiff, and one has to go the extra mile of private study and extensive revision to keep up with the pace. Any attempt to relax may compromise ones grades and even attract academic warning and in extreme cases discontinuation. The curricular structure of Umass Lowell is more comprehensive and organized to initiate hard work amongst the teaching

Explain and evaluate three different theories of leadership. What does Research Paper

Explain and evaluate three different theories of leadership. What does the emergence of on leaders as 'corporate psychopaths' contribute to the discussion - Research Paper Example Other theories take pride in being inclusive by incorporating essential factors like contingency. Others theories have a narrow focus on leadership by concentrating on the causes and effects of the leader attribution processes on subordinates and followers. Others theories examine on the wider array of leadership functions, expounding on production and worker satisfaction and the need for external alignment and organisational change (Waite, 2008). This study focuses on three theories of leadership namely great man theories, skills theories approach and relational theories. Great man theories of leadership trait theories are the oldest of all concepts that seeks to explain leadership. The earliest leadership studies assumed the notion that leaders were born and not made. Great man theories thought of leaders always as males with natural competencies of authority and influence. The trait theory reflects the first systematic efforts to study leadership to establish leadership traits, which made certain people great leaders. Military, political and social leaders’ traits like Indira Gandhi, napoleon Bonaparte, Abraham Lincoln and Catherine the great were used to formulate the theory. The great men theory was challenged in the mid 20th century on the basis of universality of leadership qualities. One challenge on the theory held that there is no constant set of qualities that distinguished leaders from non-leaders. In addition, a person who had leadership attributes in one situation may not make a good leader in another. Further criticism held that individual attributes were largely associated with people’s perception of leadership (Outcalt, Faris, & McMahon, 2001). The trait leadership has gained fresh interest through the present prominence given on charismatic and visionary leadership. Charismatic leadership attracted fresh interest following the election of president Barrack Obama in 2008. Charismatic

Professional Portfolio Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

Professional Portfolio - Assignment Example She/he worked side by side with me for 8 months and I admire the strong sense of dedication and responsibility she displayed both to the hospital and her/his patients. I am sad to inform you that our institution is currently undergoing a restructuring and some of the employees have to be released and (Your Name) is one of the people we have been forced to release. She/he insisted that she would be pleased to work with your institution and that is why I endorse her to you. As a nurse, (Your Name) displayed professionalism that impacted her patients and all people around her/him. Everyone here respects him/her the entire nursing staff here like her/his work. This is because he/she has been used severally as a resource by other nurses for difficult crisis and cases. (Your Name) has always done more than expected to ensure that he/she is able to deliver the best service care to the patients She/he is a very reliable medical professional with enough knowledge about her/his job and treats every person with respect. She/he is a wonderful person to work with and, despite the fact that we would miss her and her strong passion, I strongly recommend her to you. (Your Name) is well educated and has valuable experience to be a great medical nurse. In the event that you need any more details, kindly feel free to call me at _______ or email me at ________________. It is my great honor to recommend (Your Name) as a staff nurse at Bethel Medical Center. Despite the fact that I will miss (Your Name)s skill, professionalism and expertise in my practice, I believe that she/he will be able to implicate the same effort and impact the community in your institution. I am certain that (Your Name) is the kind of nurse that will effectively serve the community well whenever patients come looking for treatments related to her area of expertise. (Your Name) has been a very crucial asset to my practice. She/he has been able to develop exceptional abilities and skills in

Spatial Disorientation for Pilots Research Paper

Spatial Disorientation for Pilots - Research Paper Example Three types of spatial disorientation occur in the field of aviation. Type I disorientation relates to when the pilots do not sense any unusual occurrence. The pilots tend to be in a state that makes them believe in the normalcy of the aircraft’s response to the required inputs. This results from the pilot’s lack of concentration on the primary flight instruments. Lack of concentration can be due to distractions that make the pilot shift attention to another source for a considerable amount of time. Type II disorientation occurs when the pilot senses the existence of conflicting orientation cues. The pilot becomes unsure of what the flight instruments depict in relation to their personal interpretation, as well as what the out-the-window view signals. Such cases arise when the pilots shift their attention from the flight instruments for a substantial period, or when they break from a cloud in an unusual position. In most of these cases, the pilot gets to control the air craft or manages to access the help of another pilot. On the other hand, if the pilots fail to control type II spatial disorientation, the problem becomes more risky, leading to an incapacitating spatial disorientation, or type III spatial disorientation. This involves the awareness of the pilot of the conflicting cues. However, the state of the aircraft confuses the professionals, leading to incorrect adjustments. Making changes to the incorrect actions usually poses great difficulty, which makes recovery impossible in most cases. Research by the U.S. Army Combat Readiness/Safety Center further illustrates the prevalence of accidents caused by these three types of disorientation. Type I disorientation poses the highest amount of risk, compared to the other two.This follows the fact that the pilots do not get to realize the potential danger, which means that no precautions take place to counter the hazard. Type III disorientation poses a minimal risk, which means that most pilots ga ther the courage to correct anomalies, while a small percentage fails to gather such confidence (Webb, Estrada & Kelley, 225).

Organization design ((anthonys pizza) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Organization design ((anthonys pizza) - Essay Example If these workers had some basic training for making simple things in the kitchen, it would go a long way in reducing wastage of time. In turn, customers would not experience enforcement, which is to stand in line for a long time. Overall, the time wastage and the high training costs may receive quick resolution. Currently, after the training, the new employees have three trials and then the management may subjectively decide whether to retain the employees or dismiss them. At that point, the pizzeria loses money used to train employee. If the employees after the hiring and training process, were given contracts to sign, which implied the subjective letting go would not exist anymore, Anthony’s pizza would save significant cash. In addition, Anthony’s pizza may only hire the employees they need all year round, and hire a few casual labourers during the peak period. When Anthony’s pizza is making a decision to train an employee, this does not entail formal evaluation. Before employees’ introduction to the work environment, they ought to undergo meticulous evaluation. This will reduce the probability of placing employees who have undergone inadequate training meant for the working settings. This is because it is in the nature of poorly trained employees to be wasteful. They also have a higher probability of making mistakes, which wastes foods and other products and wastes time. The wastage may be reduced by properly evaluating employees before placing them in the working environment. In addition, most employees who are let go are always bitter and claim that everything seemed perfect until they were let go. This means that they never saw it coming. This is especially due to being put in the working environment before proper evaluation. The management should review the performance of the new employees during trials and tell them are as that need improvement instead of firing them. This again will

Slave Revolts Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Slave Revolts - Assignment Example Set in 1839, Amistad reveals the story of a group of recently captured West African slaves aboard the ship of La Amistad from the coast of Cuba, their unexpected voyage to the United States and their plight for freedom under legal complexities. Their leader Cinque recounts that they were illegally taken to a slave fort in the British territory of Sierra Leone in Africa. They were enslaved and eventually transported and sold to Cuban slave markets. During the transatlantic journey, the slaves suffered from torture, random execution and even rape. Because of the horrible conditions that these men endured, the thirst for freedom conquered their fears that led to a revolt aboard La Amistad. The slaves killed their captors in cold blood and directed the remaining crew to bring them back in their home country. However, the ship crew brought them in the United States instead, and the series of legal battle against slavery followed that eventually reached the Supreme Court. The issue of slavery in society up stretched the immoral and callous truth of treating a fellow human being as an object of property and as a marginal individual. In the course of the Amistad uprising, whites bought black African slaves, or anyone with African descent, for additional labor either for their household or in agricultural plantations. Very little rights were given to slaves, while their fate, reproduction and survival belong solely to their owners. It was an atrocious normal way of life as supported by law and politics during that era. Nonetheless, the centuries-worth of suppression gradually developed into an eruption of violence through rebellion and mass disobedience, which later pushed to the American Civil War (Mann, 2008). In addition to the Amistad case, the U.S. Supreme Court backed up the previous ruling of the lower court to give the

Parkinson Disease Essay Example for Free

Parkinson Disease Essay Parkinson disease is a gradually progressive degenerative disorder of the central nervous system. Parkinson disease belongs to a group of conditions called movement disorders. There are four characteristic problems caused by Parkinson disease, including tremor at rest, balance problems, stiffness, and slowness of movement. Parkinson disease occurs when areas of the brain, including an area called the substantia nigra, is slowly destroyed. The exact reason for this destruction is not completely known. In some patients, it may be due to genetic, environmental, or a combination of both causes. The end result is a deprivation in the brain of an important neurochemical, called dopamine. Dopamine helps regulate movement, and its loss leads to increased tone, rigidity, and slowness of movement. Lack of dopamine results in the symptoms associated with Parkinson disease . Approximately 50,000 Americans are diagnosed with Parkinson disease every year. 95% of those diagnosed are over 50 years old. At any given time, about 500,000 people, or 1% of those over age 50 in the US are struggling with this condition. Diagnosis of Parkinson disease is a clinical one, based on history and physical examination. There are no lab tests to definitively diagnose the condition. Your doctor will ask about your medical history and perform a thorough physical exam. A systematic neurological exam will include testing your reflexes and observing things like muscle strength throughout your body, coordination, balance, and other details of movement, including: * Muscle tone Rapid alternating movements * Gait, posture * Postural stability * Quickness and precision of movement * Observation of a tremor (during rest or activity) A mini mental status exam will be performed; questions pertaining to mood, thoughts, and behavior will be asked. Activities of daily living will be evaluated, such as dressing, cutting and eating food, swallowing, hygiene, walking, and falls. The exact cause of PD is unknown. It may have both genetic and environmental components. Some scientists think that viruses can trigger PD as well. Low levels of dopamine and norepinephrine, a substance that regulates dopamine, have been linked with PD. Abnormal proteins called Lewy bodies have also been found in the brains of people with PD. Scientists do not know what role, if any, Lewy bodies play a role in the development of PD. Certain groups of people have an increased risk of PD. Men are one and a half times more likely to get PD than women. Whites are more likely to get PD than African-Americans or Asians. PD usually appears between the ages of 50 and 60. It only occurs before the age of 40 in five to 10 percent of cases. People with a family history are more likely to develop this disorder. The four major motor problems seen in PD are: * tremor—shaking that occurs at rest * slow movements * stiffness of arms, legs, and trunk * problems with balance and tendency to fall Secondary symptoms of PD include: * blank facial expression * a tendency to get stuck when walking * small, cramped handwriting * muffled, low-volume speech * decreased blinking and swallowing * tendency to fall backwards * reduced arm swinging when walking Other, more extreme, symptoms of PD are: flaky white or yellow scales on oily parts of the skin, known as seborrheic dermatitis * sleep disturbances—including vivid dreams, talking, and movement during sleep * depression * anxiety * hallucinations * psychosis * problems with attention and memory * difficulty with visual-spatial relationships There is no specific test for PD. Diagnosis is made based on health history and a physical and neurological exam. Tests such as C AT scan or MRI may be used to rule out other conditions. Adequate rest, exercise, and a balanced diet are important. Speech therapy, occupational therapy, and physical therapy can also help to improve communication and self care. Surgical interventions are reserved for people who don’t respond to medication, therapy, and lifestyle changes. So are procedures such as deep brain stimulation (DBS). In almost all cases of PD, medication will be required to help control the various physical and mental health symptoms associated with the disease. Drugs and Medication Used to Treat Parkinson’s Disease | Medication A number of different drugs can be used to treat PD. Levodopa Levodopa is the most common treatment for PD. It helps to replenish dopamine. About 75 percent of cases respond to levodopa, but not all symptoms are improved. Levodopa is generally given with cardiodopa. This delays the conversion of levodopa to carbidopa until it gets into the brain. Dopamine Agonists Dopamine agonistscan imitate the action of dopamine in the brain. Dopamine agonists are less effective than levodopa. However, they can be useful as bridge medications when levodopa is less effective. Drugs in this class include bromocriptine, pramipexole, and ropinirole.

The crisis of masculinity

The crisis of masculinity INTRODUCTION My dissertation is concerned with the male hegemony of Hollywood cinema. I will consider briefly the representation of the female but only to support the discussion of male hegemony in regards to spectatorship and representation of the male. I will limit my argument to the â€Å"post feminist† period (post 1970s) because this cinema era is extremely significant as it demonstrates a fundamental change in the representation of the male. I have decided to concentrate on the representation of the male because the discussion of female representation, although not investigated in its entirety, is generally more prevalent. I have chosen to analyze two key films that had major success in the year 1999. I have specifically chosen these films as not only do they reenact a threshold point in societys perception, but both deal heavily with the theme of modern day masculinity. The two different approaches from very different directors- David Fincher, The director of Fight club has a lengthy history of â€Å"mainstream† work whereas Paul Thomas Andersons work history is more â€Å"alternative†. I will argue that in its structure Fight club is highly synonymous with Hollywood in terms of character placement.(male protagonist, passive female). I will look at how Magnolia is more discoursive/melodramatic focusing on coming from a â€Å"female† perspective. I will look at the main characters in each of the films and discuss how both films approach the key aspects of masculinity: Paternity the Phallus. The similar concerns and contrasting nature of the films thus conclude that they serve as great examples for discussion. The dissertation will consider film theory and psycho-analysis however I would like to relate those to cinematic textual systems a term used by to describe mise en scene elements, editing and other cinematic manipulation of the frame for the spectator. Talk about how perspective and cinematography are interlinked, cinematography being vital to â€Å"the gaze†. â€Å"To theorize the gaze is to engage in cinematic textual systems (diegesis, montage, mise-en-scene, intertextuality etc) and the act of viewing, as well as the competing, dynamic and heterogeneous processes involved between the two†. Pg 6 (a) WHY CINEMATOGRAPHY IS IMPORTANT TO DISCUSS. Once we have investigated on a functional level how cinema manipulates the viewers gaze only then can we move forward and expand on this? The very existence of cinema relies on box office profits; cinema conveys the reality of the desire of the spectator, but also notably produces films that display the unconscious fears of the societies that produced them. This is an argument I will discuss at more length in the first chapter. CHAPTERS: Phallocentric perspective/cinematography I will start by engaging with the philosophy which forms the basis of the dissertation. I will also justify the inclusion of cinematography as a valid point in my dissertation by clarifying its relationship with film theory and psychoanalysis. â€Å"Were Designed to be hunters and were in a society of shoppers† Tyler Durder (Fight Club) In the second chapter I will put my discussion in context, explaining briefly the importance of the cinema of this era. â€Å"Fight Club†: I will discuss why I chose the two films I did The two different approaches directors- coming from very different background fightclub is aimed at mainstream whilst magnolia comes from an alternative viewpoint. I will argue that in its structure Fight club is highly synonymous with Hollywood in terms of character placement.(male protagonist, passive neurotic female) â€Å"Magnolia†: I will look at the key characters of the film and analyse how they demonstrate a crisis of masculinity. I will examine the look at how Paul Andersons Magnolia manages to subvert the male hegemony of mainstream films and acts as a critique of the Hollywood cinematic address. PHALLOCENTRIC PERPSEPCTIVE: â€Å"The spectator constructed by the text is taken to be male-regardless of the ‘actual gender of the viewer. He is taken to look through the eyes of the male hero on screen at the on-screen female, so that the viewer in the auditorium can fantasize the pleasure of dominating and possessing her, and thus enjoy the visual pleasure of ‘masculine conquest†. Kenneth Mackinnon Whatever the route of the gaze, the result is the same. She is objectified. And the female object confirms that the male is the proper and sole subject.† (b) pg 126 Since Hollywoods conception the films produced have taken to rather formulaic, standardized conventions to accrue predicted success at the box office. These are seen in its cinematic style, and narrative form. As a result Hollywood has become extremely skilled at satisfying the spectator through manipulation of its address. male hegemony At the beginning of cinema for example, spectators desired to see more and so became the standardization of erotic display to satisfy the spectator interest in voyeurism. Thus this Hollywood address gives us a spectacular insight into the unconscious fears and desires of society. If we look at one particular example â€Å"Metropolis† (1927) Directed by Fritz Lang, this film featured a destructive and powerful female robot. Notably this film came at a time when society had to deal with the increased mechanization, loss of jobs in industries resulted in a perceived loss of male control and power. â€Å"Metropolis† represented the destruction of masculine dominance over science and nature, represented as a female android, the ultimate opposite. The more information gathered by the development in film theory and psychoanalysis the further we can investigate into understanding the reality of the relationship between spectator and cinema and can move forward from male hegemony into creating an alternative cinema one in which both sexes are represented fairly. this can be shown through the deigesis, mise en scene, etc etc. In Laura Mulveys essay â€Å"Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema†, she discusses the passive role that women have played in cinema arguing that this passive role supports the male hegemony by encouraging visual pleasure. This visual pleasure is formed by Mulvey identifies three â€Å"looks† or perspectives that occur in film which serve to sexually objectify women. The first is the perspective of the male character on screen and how he perceives the female character. The second is the perspective of the spectator as they see the female character on screen. The third â€Å"look† joins the first two looks together: it is the male audience members perspective of the male character in the film. This third perspective allows the male audience to take the female character as his own personal sex object because he can relate himself, through looking, to the male character in the film. Female body representation has always involved some degree of eroticism fragment a womens body into various body parts. A good example of how editing shot composition and framing can be seen in Martin Scorseses Raging Bull. The main character Jake La Motta becomes entranced by the physical beauty of - by the side of the pool. By the sequence of close ups we are placed into the mental position of Jake to reduce - to a mere object to be gawped at. Here we literally see the â€Å"looks† as Mulvey referred to them shown through the shot juxtapositioning. Although one could argue this section was designed to illuminate us of Jakes disturbed mentality, thus serves as an extreme example; however we do see these looks perpetrating mainstream Hollywood throughout the generations since its beginnings. However self conscious and ironic Hollywood manages to be, it always restricts itself to a formal mise en scene reflecting the dominant ideological concept of the cinema. The alternative cinema provides a space for the birth of cinema which is radical in a both a political sense and an aesthetic sense and thus challenges the basic assumptions of the mainstream film Thus cinematography holds the key to the buried attitudes of gender. The cinema is an epic form that utilizes dramatic elements; this is determined by the technologies of the camera and editing. Even in a spatially and temporally continuous scene (mimicking the theatrical situation, as it were), the camera chooses where to look for us. In a similar way, editing causes us to jump from one place (and time sometimes) to another, whether it be somewhere else in the room, or across town. This jump is a form of narration; it is as if a narrator whispers to us: â€Å"meanwhile, on the other side of the forest†. â€Å"One of the key pleasures cinema allows is identification. The spectator will almost always identify with the character whose look authorizes the point of view shot.† pg 94 Hedges,Inez Vertigo is a prime example whereby everything is seen from the perspective of the main male protagonist, the audience follow his erotic obsession and subsequent despair precisely from his point of view. However the spectator is caught in moral ambiguity toward the latter part of the film as the film reveals the illicit nature of the voyeurism. â€Å"Were Designed to be hunters and were in a society of shoppers† -Tyler Durden â€Å"These violent white male icons grew at a time when working class white males had to contend with increasing economic instability and dislocation, the perception of gains by people of colour at the expense of the white working class and a womens movement that overtly challenged the male hegemony. One way the system allows working clases (of various races) the opportunity for masculine identity validation is through the use of their body as an instrument of power dominance and control.. The threat that women posed as a result of their increased economic independence, destabilizes gender realtions and upsets male identity†. Spectacle of the Male WHAT WAS GOING ON AT THE TIME? Working Class Males had less access to more abstract forms of masculinity validating power (economic power, workplace authority) Fightclub protagonist has loss of authority, in the end he reaffirms his masculinity through physical acts of violence. Susan Faludi went one step further, arguing that films of the 1980s such as Fatal Attraction (1987) and Baby Boom (1987) were part of a wider backlash against womens liberation and womens careers.Yearning for reinstatement of the nuclear family, American Beauty protagonist yearns for realignment of patriarchal structure as does Gaz in full monty his desire to recover his role as breadwinner so that he can reclaim his son from his ex wife. FIGHT CLUB â€Å"It touched a nerve in the male psyche that was debated in newspapers across the world.† The Times MARLA: â€Å"Could be worse, a woman could cut off your penis† Tyler Durden Marla introduces/is the conflict. Neurotic marla is a sexualized woman/object (her flat dildo etc) placed into whore category. she disturbs the house causes cracks in walls leaks, etc. â€Å"What counts is what the heroine provokes or rather what she represents. She is the one or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the concern he feels for her, who makes him act the way he does. In herself the woman has not the slightest importance† Budd Boetticher TYLER: Tyler and his impulsive nature, represents the Freudian philosophy of the Id. The id is responsible for our basic drives such as food, water, sex and basic impulses. EXPAND Always has his chest on show like the iconic images of the 1980s heroic action movies. The body is shown to acquire battle scars which removes any erotism which may induce the female gaze need to explain.. used as a tool of power to redeem authority. This is the physical manifestation of the ironic rejection of the â€Å"heroes† of the action films of the previous years. He is in control, has the power over Marla and makes the decisions, drives the narrative. PATERNITY: â€Å"Were a generation of men raised by women† Tyler Durden Paternity discussed in the bathroom between the two, father abandoned him EXPAND THE PHALLUS: First introduced to violent action gun in his mouth then to the softer image of sign saying â€Å"Were still men† Bob has larger breasts feminized. The genitals are particularly present in this film from Tyler showing the graphic images of full frontal male nudity of the penis to taking away the statesmens balls thus demasculating him. Balls stand for Male Power the ability to reproduce Testicular cancer meetings also. Dildo in Marlas bedroom representing the fake male the fake man, the substitution of the real penis with a fake one reveals inferiority complex no need for the real man in the modern world. CINEMATOGRAPHY: Primarily the narrative of the film Fight Club is wholly centered on the male our protagonist Jack. We are encouraged as the spectator to emphasize with him, he navigates the shots in the Voice over the use of the word â€Å" we† is used to encourage identification from the spectator. Is there a problem with identification in this film because the spectator identifies with the protagonist Jack who turns out to be Tyler also so when Jack finds out he is Tyler not only do we experience the same surprise as him, the spectator is left feeling removed from identification? Misplaced just as man does in society? The creation of a microcosm in the house new world order fascism back to being real men, almost militarian (thats what they associate with manhood). Use of colour, lighting difference between the house and the flat, how Brad is framed with his chest exposed showing his muscular torso to portray the idealized man Jack wants to be. The decaying house, large empty insde and out (as its on an industrial estate) builds up a representation of the inner vacousness of the protagonist. MAGNOLIA Paul Thomas Andersons LA ensemble film â€Å"Magnolia† disrupts the classic Oedipal patterning common to many mainstream films. The film repeatedly enacts a pronounced degree of male failure and what amounts to an indictment of the system of father rule The men of Magnolia are to some extent all feminized by circumstance or choice: Earl, dying, is in need of care; Phil is a compassionate male nurse; Donnie is gay and wants to give love; Jimmy, because of his illness, is dependent; and Jim is a nurturing representative of the law who loses first his baton and then his gun, the phallic signifier par excellence. Even Frank Mackey, who has closed down his internal feminine, is again a caretaker by the films end. The most recalcitrant male is Stanleys father, Rick. He suggests a barely controlled violence, throwing a chair through the television as Stanley refuses to compete. A crisis in masculinity and male paradigms of power and behavior is posed. Clearly, the film is scrutinizing how to be a man and live as a man in culture. FRANK: This notion is foregrounded by Franks â€Å"Seduce and Destroy† infomercials, which appear during different segments of the film, and his performance of masculinity for the internal diegetic male audience. The excess of language, gestures, and emotion here enact male hysteria. A wielding of language that speaks as a means to recapture and reanimate male power, it suggests a masculinity reasserting itself at the expense of women. Franks misogyny and anger toward women come to seem a projection, a denial of the self-loathing and father-loss that resulted in his becoming his mothers caretaker as she succumbed to cancer. Women seem to be a smokescreen for his pain, something he can latch on to and feed his sense of rage. Frank, played by Cruise at his best in his usual angry young man mode, is aptly named as the teacher of ostensible truth, power and control who with arms nailed to an unseen cross is projected as an illuminated (Lucifer) savior. His crucified humanity, now a loaded shell, a persona with rigid firm ego boundaries of patent masculinity, launches a provocative assault, laced with inexplicable resentment, against Woman. His assumed control and power over his own vulnerability (fear of his undeveloped feminine component generalized as woman) results paradoxically from the rejection by and loss of his father followed by the incessant care of his slowly dying mother whom he was unable to save. PATERNITY: Stanley Spector to his father: â€Å"You need to start being nicer to me† His all-encompassing impotent rage is projected along with his need to control the symbolic Woman who constitutes the loss of his childhood and manhood. Like a fatherless boy of the ghetto, he shuns the excessive identification and nauseating closeness associated with his mother and her powerless circumstance. To acquire her world would only confirm his loss and her power to destroy. To him she only means burden and loss of freedom; thus he abuses Woman in order to maintain control and detachment. Moreover, his loss of masculinity resulting from the inability to control the inevitable suffering and eventual death of his mother lead him to create and identify with what he lacks, a powerful male image. His artificial self-acquired mastery over himself results tragically from lack of opposition since he cannot win the badge of manhood by defeating a foe who is missing or a cause that is inexplicable. The grateful male crowd (representing the incomplete male) is willing to pay Frank to attain his techniques to compensate for its loss and to overcome its incompleteness through the power of maintaining distance and control. But Frank paradoxically eventually finds redemption in what he denied, in the traditional female manner of acquiring power, through interaction with the Other. Frank, the rejected son finally confronts his dying father who is now unable to reply, apologize and expiate his guilt. Without the articulation and acceptance of his fathers sin, Frank cannot forgive or overcome the unknown one, he can only endure his memory. The cathartic release of his tormented repressed anger and simultaneous conflicted fear of another loss of and desire for his missing father is gripping. He faces uncertainty but his acceptance of his past and his anguished self, the veil of his repression and denial of his history is lifted and results in the loosening of his current defences and hi s false self. The painful return from/to his original position confirms that rebirth is painful. He can now join the family of man. The initially compliant game show kid (J. Blackman) alters his condition of bondage by sacrificing the moment of glory by a paradoxical (anorexial) attempt to avoid the game by controlling his body until he loses bladder control. When he realizes that adherence to arbitrary debilitating rules crushes creativity and freedom, he loses his ambition to succeed conventionally by a symbolic Freudian urethral discharge. Both the game and his body are beyond his control. He confronts his parasitic father as an incomplete child (no mother), asking to be treated anew with respect without having to constantly sacrifice himself to earn the love of his father. THE PHALLUS The cop who shows an interest in her, needs no change, only completion by another, but he too demonstrates his universal deficiency by losing the badge of his profession, his gun. This loss of power is later recovered from the sky god and magically saves a life. His stability rests on his identification with the law which he chooses to interpret selectively as a wise judge with the power to render mercy CINEMATOGRAPHY: Magnolia constructs the place of the female subject differently for the process of identification with the spectator. This is done by.. Magnolia systematically rejects mainstream films signifying system. As Fiske notes, soap opera suggests the workings of a feminine aesthetic and thereby posits the audience as female (180). Magnolia subverts the classic masculine gaze and audience address usually associated with film. The masochistic position from which we watch Magnolia is inscribed by the excessive music and by the competition of the musical discourse and the dialogue. This is doubly inscribed, as it were, because it speaks to the condition of the character as opposed to working in counterpoint to the image. For example, â€Å"One† (â€Å"is the loneliest number †) plays while introducing these lonely characters; over a close-up of the victimized and addicted Claudia, we hear â€Å"Save Me† (â€Å"You look like a girl who could use a tourniquet †). Soap operas exemplify such â€Å"double-voiced discourses† in which dominant cultural forms allow women participation (Fiske 192). The predominant use of close-ups and extreme close-ups throughout the film also expresses this excess. â€Å"There are two dramatic points of depature for melodrama. One is coloured by a female protagonists viewpoint which provides a focus for identification. The other examines the family and between the sexes and generations; here, although women play an important part, their point of view is not always analysed and does not initiate the drama† pg 42 Mulvey.L Marcie, the unruly black woman at the edges of the text, shouts what appear to be empty threats, but the danger she evokes is soon realized. The canted camera angles and frenzy of the editing, in addition to her shouting, foreground the level of disorder she represents. Handcuffed to a sofa, she continues to be verbally abusive as Jim investigates. Pulling the sofa from room to room, she becomes comic relief even as her powerful frame suggests a formidable adversary. Jim seems barely a match for Marcie, despite her containment. Jim: â€Å"MARCIE! DO NOT DRAG THAT COUCH ANY FURTHER!† (Anderson 29). Coded as marginal, Marcie wreaks havoc on the established order to which she is subject but in which she has no place, except as the â€Å"return of the repressed.† Jim finds a dead man in her closet. As a black woman existing on the social margins, she is an enigma that Jim and the film refuse to solve. In terms of sex, too, Magnolia exposes the system of male hegemony and power. In most soap operas, the condition of women living under patriarchy is examined to promote a reading that women identify as corresponding to their own reality, which leads to tears. Doane refers to these melodramatic texts as activating the â€Å"tropes of femininity† (183): waiting, watching and self-sacrifice. Through Jimmy and Earl, marriage as a system is also undermined. Not only is Jimmy adulterous, alcoholic, womanizing, and guilty of incest, he has astonishing contempt for his wife. In one of the films most powerful scenes, Rose learns the truth about her marriage, but it is also clear that she has known. Her performance of the dutiful wife, right up to the end, motivates Jimmys contempt. Rose can only face Jimmys molestation of Claudia when her husband breaks with the veneer of mutual respect and love on which their marriage is based. The only women with power in Magnolia are the black women, and when we are with them we are sutured to the position of two of the films key white male characters, Frank and Jim. That we identify with these women anyway, and with their threat to Frank and Jim, speaks to Magnolias feminine positioning of the viewer.† (a) â€Å"Magnolia displaces film narrative to television text and shifts from the normative masculine viewing position to a feminine one. Magnolia is symptomatic of a crisis in masculinity and interrogates cultural texts such as cop shows, quiz shows, and infomercials. Magnolia is a subversive cultural product, an indictment of paradigms of male hegemony and power, and a critique of the media systems of film and television. The films privileging of the soundtrack is unusual. Paul Thomas Anderson conceives the film in relation to one of Aimee Manns songs and envisions her voice as â€Å"another character† in the film (Anderson 204). Her voice does indeed constitute another character to such an extent that at times it upsets the normative hierarchy of discourses that mainstream films espouse. The use of such a counternarrative strategy and the predominance of a strong female voice working against and at times doubling the text also point to Magnolias challenge to the â€Å"male† textual film system and more traditionally â€Å"masculine† narratives. Manns voice is like a commentary on the action, pulling us in to watch the film from a female viewing position. BIBLIOGRAPHY Dillman, Joanne Clark â€Å"Magnolia†: Masquerading as Soap Opera, Journal of Popular Film and Television 33 no3 142-50 Fall 2005 Dines, Gail: Gender, Race and Class in the media Brod,H. (Ed) (1987) The making of masculinities Various, â€Å"The trouble with men: Masculinities in europeon and Hollywood cinema.† Fuery,Patrick (2000) New Developments In Film Theory- Palgrave, New York, â€Å"Male Spectatorship and the Hollywood Love Story†: Mackinnon, Kenneth. Journal of Gender Studies, Vol. 12, No. 2, 2003, Carfax Publishing Classical Hollywood Cinema : Film Style Mode of Production to 1960 Bordwell, David.; Staiger, Janet.; Thompson, Kristin Publication: London Taylor Francis Routledge, 1988. FILMOGRAPHY Fight Club () Dir: David Fincher Magnolia (1999) Paul Thomas Anderson Rocky ( 198 200 ) Thelma and Louise (1991)Dir: Ridley Scott

The Castration of Eloisa in Popes Eloisa to Abelard :: Pope Eloisa to Abelard Essays

The Castration of Eloisa in Pope's Eloisa to Abelard If Pope's intent in writing an Ovidian heroic epistle is to show the entire range of his protagonist's emotions from meekness to violent passion, then he was wise to choose the twelfth-century story of Eloisa and Abelard as his subject. Eloisa and her teacher Abelard retired to different monasteries after her family discovered they were lovers and brutally castrated him. Years later, Eloisa by chance intercepted a letter from Abelard to a friend chronicling their love affair. The letter reawakened Eloisa's long repressed passion for Abelard, and she struggles to reconcile her sexual passion with her religious vows. As she has taken a vow of silence, the only mode of expression left to Eloisa is her emotion, which she often expresses by weeping. She tells Abelard in her mind: Tears still are mine, and those I need not spare, Love but demands what else were shed in pray'r; No happier task these faded eyes pursue, To read and weep is all they now can do. (lines 45-48) Eloisa thus lives in her mind, communicating mentally with God and now her former lover Abelard alternately. Pope's poem is his idea of what Eloisa would write to Abelard in a letter, albeit a letter whose writing would have spanned several years until her death. In his seminal 1969 article "The Escape from Body or the Embrace of Body," Murray Krieger states that "the poem represents at once a finished letter and a letter that, apparently finished, is actually in the stormy process of being written" (34). The richness of Pope's language juxtaposed with the rigidity of his couplet form have suggested to critics both the depth of Eloisa's emotion and the restraints placed on her by the Church and her vows. This juxtaposition has troubled some critics (including Krieger) as a mismatch. These critics argue that a writer in Eloisa's emotional state would produce writing that is much less polished and constrained than Pope's perfect couplets. In fact, that Pope records Eloisa's emotional l anguage in the confining couplet verse structure is precisely what Krieger calls the poem's failure. I propose that Pope intended Eloisa's emotional outbursts to strain against his own exacting poetic form. I believe Pope constricts Eloisa's florid language within the couplet in order to emphasize the severity of the imprisonment she suffers in the monastery. Further, I would argue that Eloisa's imprisonment in a monastery, combined with the vow of silence and marriage to the Church required of her as part of her religious confinement, is a symbolic act of

Prostituting the Constitution Essay examples -- Exploratory Essays Res

Prostituting the Constitution It has become fashionable to propose amendments to the constitution for all imaginable causes. Thus the nation's charter is endangered by a barrage of new and unworthy ideas offered up by opportunistic politicians seeking to exploit popular passions. Indeed, constitutional reform seems to be the hot topic around Washington and in the writings of both liberal and conservative journalists across the country. No longer is it suitable for legislation to follow the normal means of entering into law - ratification by both House and Senate, pending the signature of the President. Rather, this new breed of constitutional reformers seeks to undermine this very process, not to mention the Constitution itself, with their volley of proposed amendments. Proponents of such congressional reform bitterly deny that the sanctity of the Constitution is ever tarnished in the midst of their attempts to update the Constitution to reflect pressing social issues. These proponents contend that the very proposals with which they seek to indelibly stain the Constitution are comparable to those other amendments added to the Constitution in its history. In other words, current policy issues merit equal attention with amendments such as those whic h eradicated the poll tax or secured suffrage for all Americans. Whether or not there exists an equality between those problems plaguing contemporary society and those thought ageless in the eighteenth century is difficult to assess. Nonetheless, assuming that issues such as abortion, school prayer, flag burning, term limits, and the balanced budget deserve the attention that they have received in Washington, it remains to be argued convincingly that th... ...t say that the policies themselves proposed to become permanent fixtures in the Constitution are flawed. Rather, it is to say that such hysteria is merely empty symbolism, and a way to clutter the Constitution with dubious prose. For instance, there very well ought to be means to ensure that the government operates with a balanced budget, or that the rights of those who wish to pray in school are protected. However, as of yet, it has not been demonstrated that these mere issues of domestic policy warrant inclusion in the nation's most sacred document. Politicians ought to return to the Constitution with heartfelt resolve, seeking from it inspiration and guidance. The Constitution ought never to become the prostitute of two-bit politicians across the nation who, in the dire moments of reelection, call upon its sacred name to secure their own futures.

English Language Teaching Essays -- essays research papers

Topic Literature Review: English Language Teaching Strategies for Learning-Disabled Secondary School Students Introduction   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  One of the aims of the Singapore Ministry of Education is to ensure that all school-going children receive a minimum ten years of general education. Streaming is one way to ensure that all students are taught according to their academic ability, and â€Å"learn at a pace which they can cope.† (Coping with Singaporeans’ Concerns, 2001, p. 4). At the primary school level, remediation programmes such as the â€Å"Learning Support Programme (LSP) and the Encouragement Achievement and Better Learning (ENABLE) Programmes† are made available to assist students who have been assessed as weak in English and Mathematics (Coping with Singaporeans’ concerns, 2001, p. 4). At secondary level, the Normal Technical (NT) stream was implemented in 1994 to cater to students who are less academically inclined. The majority of the learning-disabled students will be found in the NT stream. In NT stream, students follow a less rigorous curriculum which focuses on English and Mathematics, and more hands-on learning experiences. The NT curriculum basically prepares students for vocational/technical academic and career paths. Unlike primary schools where there are remediation programmes to support students who are identified as weak in academic performance or â€Å"learning-disabled†, little attention is given to NT stream students, especially students with learning disabilities. This can be attributed to a number of reasons such as exclusion of NT stream students’ performance at National Examinations from the school league table, and inadequately-trained general education teachers to teach students with special educational needs. For any remediation programmes that are available, they are provided at an ad hoc basis by out-of-school â€Å"ethnic self-help groups and voluntary welfare organizations† (Coping with Singaporeans’ concerns, 2001, p. 4). Research has revealed that NT students suffer from â€Å"low self-esteem†, â€Å"achievement motivation†, and â€Å"poor study habits† as they progress up the levels in secondary schools (Chan, 1996). One of the main reasons for the poor academic performance of NT students is that most NT students face problems following lessons in class. All subjects, with the exception of Mother Tongue subject, are ... ...h that is grammatical, fluent, appropriate for purpose, context and culture. 3.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  A Summary of the learning Outcomes by the End of Secondary Two and Four Normal Technical: Pupils will: a.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Respond to a variety of texts and demonstrate a positive attitude towards reading and language. b.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Listen for information from a variety of sources. c.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Speak fluently and expressively on a range of topics. d.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Present and develop ideas effectively in speech/writing for a variety of purposes and audiences. e.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Write legibly, coherently and cohesively for different purpose and audiences. f.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Demonstrate knowledge about language and text types from print/ non-print/ electronic source. g.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Use reading strategies to construct meaning. (Adapted from Ministry of Education. (2001). English Language Syllabus 2001 For Primary and Secondary Schools. Singapore: Curriculum Planning and Development Division, Ministry of Education.)

An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’

Achebe, Chinua. â€Å"An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's ‘Heart of Darkness'† Massachusetts Review. 18. 1977. Rpt. in Heart of Darkness, An Authoritative Text, background and Sources Criticism. 1961. 3rd ed. Ed. Robert Kimbrough, London: W. W Norton and Co. , 1988, pp. 251-261 In the fall of 1974 I was walking one day from the English Department at the University of Massachusetts to a parking lot. It was a fine autumn morning such as encouraged friendliness to passing strangers. Brisk youngsters were hurrying in all directions, many of them obviously freshmen in their first flush of enthusiasm.An older man going the same way as I turned and remarked to me how very young they came these days. I agreed. Then he asked me if I was a student too. I said no, I was a teacher. What did I teach? African literature. Now that was funny, he said, because he knew a fellow who taught the same thing, or perhaps it was African history, in a certain Community College not far from her e. It always surprised him, he went on to say, because he never had thought of Africa as having that kind of stuff, you know. By this time I was walking much faster. Oh well,† I heard him say finally, behind me: â€Å"I guess I have to take your course to find out. † A few weeks later I received two very touching letters from high school children in Yonkers, New York, who — bless their teacher — had just read Things Fall Apart . One of them was particularly happy to learn about the customs and superstitions of an African tribe. I propose to draw from these rather trivial encounters rather heavy conclusions which at first sight might seem somewhat out of proportion to them. But only, I hope, at first sight.The young fellow from Yonkers, perhaps partly on account of his age but I believe also for much deeper and more serious reasons, is obviously unaware that the life of his own tribesmen in Yonkers, New York, is full of odd customs and superstitions and, li ke everybody else in his culture, imagines that he needs a trip to Africa to encounter those things. The other person being fully my own age could not be excused on the grounds of his years. Ignorance might be a more likely reason; but here again I believe that something more willful than a mere lack of information was at work.For did not that erudite British historian and Regius Professor at Oxford, Hugh Trevor Roper, also pronounce that African history did not exist? If there is something in these utterances more than youthful inexperience, more than a lack of factual knowledge, what is it? Quite simply it is the desire — one might indeed say the need — in Western psychology to set Africa up as a foil to Europe, as a place of negations at once remote and vaguely familiar, in comparison with which Europe's own state of spiritual grace will be manifest.This need is not new; which should relieve us all of considerable responsibility and perhaps make us even willing to l ook at this phenomenon dispassionately. I have neither the wish nor the competence to embark on the exercise with the tools of the social and biological sciences but more simply in the manner of a novelist responding to one famous book of European fiction: Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness , which better than any other work that I know displays that Western desire and need which I have just referred to.Of course there are whole libraries of books devoted to the same purpose but most of them are so obvious and so crude that few people worry about them today. Conrad, on the other hand, is undoubtedly one of the great stylists of modern fiction and a good storyteller into the bargain. His contribution therefore falls automatically into a different class — permanent literature — read and taught and constantly evaluated by serious academics. Heart of Darkness is indeed so secure today that a leading Conrad scholar has numbered it â€Å"among the half-dozen greatest short n ovels in the English language. I will return to this critical opinion in due course because it may seriously modify my earlier suppositions about who may or may not be guilty in some of the matters I will now raise. Heart of Darkness projects the image of Africa as â€Å"the other world,† the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization, a place where man's vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant beastiality. The book opens on the River Thames, tranquil, resting, peacefully â€Å"at the decline of day after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks. But the actual story will take place on the River Congo, the very antithesis of the Thames. The River Congo is quite decidedly not a River Emeritus. It has rendered no service and enjoys no old-age pension. We are told that â€Å"Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world. † Is Conrad saying then that these two rivers are very di fferent, one good, the other bad? Yes, but that is not the real point. It is not the differentness that worries Conrad but the lurking hint of kinship, of common ancestry. For the Thames too â€Å"has been one of the dark places of the earth. It conquered its darkness, of course, and is now in daylight and at peace. But if it were to visit its primordial relative, the Congo, it would run the terrible risk of hearing grotesque echoes of its own forgotten darkness, and falling victim to an avenging recrudescence of the mindless frenzy of the first beginnings. These suggestive echoes comprise Conrad's famed evocation of the African atmosphere in Heart of Darkness . In the final consideration his method amounts to no more than a steady, ponderous, fake-ritualistic repetition of two antithetical sentences, one about silence and the other about frenzy.We can inspect samples of this on pages 36 and 37 of the present edition: a) it was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention and b) The steamer toiled along slowly on the edge of a black and incomprehensible frenzy. Of course there is a judicious change of adjective from time to time, so that instead of inscrutable, for example, you might have unspeakable, even plain mysterious, etc. , etc. The eagle-eyed English critic F. R. Leavis drew attention long ago to Conrad's â€Å"adjectival insistence upon inexpressible and incomprehensible mystery. That insistence must not be dismissed lightly, as many Conrad critics have tended to do, as a mere stylistic flaw; for it raises serious questions of artistic good faith. When a writer while pretending to record scenes, incidents and their impact is in reality engaged in inducing hypnotic stupor in his readers through a bombardment of emotive words and other forms of trickery much more has to be at stake than stylistic felicity. Generally normal readers are well armed to detect and resist such under-hand activity.But Conrad chose his subject w ell — one which was guaranteed not to put him in conflict with the psychological predisposition of his readers or raise the need for him to contend with their resistance. He chose the role of purveyor of comforting myths. The most interesting and revealing passages in Heart of Darkness are, however, about people. I must crave the indulgence of my reader to quote almost a whole page from about the middle of the stop/when representatives of Europe in a steamer going down the Congo encounter the denizens of Africa. We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet.We could have fancied ourselves the first of men taking possession of an accursed inheritance, to be subdued at the cost of profound anguish and of excessive toil. But suddenly as we struggled round a bend there would be a glimpse of rush walls, of peaked grass-roofs, a burst of yells, a whirl of black limbs, a mass of hands clapping, of feet stamping, of bodies swaying, of eyes rolling under the droop of heavy and motionless foliage. The steamer toiled along slowly on the edge of a black and incomprehensible frenzy. The prehistoric man was cursing us, praying to us, welcoming us — who could tell?We were cut off from the comprehension of our surroundings; we glided past like phantoms, wondering and secretly appalled, as sane men would be before an enthusiastic outbreak in a madhouse. We could not understand because we were too far and could not remember, because we were traveling in the night of first ages, of those ages that are gone, leaving hardly a sign — and no memories. The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there — there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly and the men were †¦. No they were not inhuman.Well, you know that was the worst of it — this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They ho wled and leaped and spun and made horrid faces, but what thrilled you, was just the thought of their humanity — like yours — the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough, but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you — you so remote from the night of first ages — could comprehend.Herein lies the meaning of Heart of Darkness and the fascination it holds over the Western mind: â€Å"What thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity — like yours †¦. Ugly. † Having shown us Africa in the mass, Conrad then zeros in, half a page later, on a specific example, giving us one of his rare descriptions of an African who is not just limbs or rolling eyes: And between whiles I had to look after the savage who was fireman. He was an improved specimen; he could fire up a vertical boiler.He was there below me and, upon my word, to look at him was as edifying as seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat walking on his hind legs. A few months of training had done for that really fine chap. He squinted at the steam-gauge and at the water-gauge with an evident effort of intrepidity — and he had filed his teeth too, the poor devil, and the wool of his pate shaved into queer patterns, and three ornamental scars on each of his cheeks. He ought to have been clapping his hands and stamping his feet on the bank, instead of which he was hard at work, a thrall to strange witchcraft, full of improving knowledge.As everybody knows, Conrad is a romantic on the side. He might not exactly admire savages clapping their hands and stamping their feet but they have at least the merit of being in their place, unlike this dog in a parody of breeches. For Conrad things being in their place is of the utmost importance. â€Å"Fine fellows — cannibals –in their place,† he tells us pointedly. Tragedy begins when things leave their accustomed place, like Europe leaving its safe stronghold between the policeman and the baker to like a peep into the heart of darkness.Before the story likes us into the Congo basin proper we are given this nice little vignette as an example of things in their place: Now and then a boat from the shore gave one a momentary contact with reality. It was paddled by black fellows. You could see from afar the white of their eyeballs glistening. They shouted, sang; their bodies streamed with perspiration; they had faces like grotesque masks — these chaps; but they had bone, muscle, a wild vitality, an intense energy of movement that was as natural and hue as the surf along their coast.They wanted no excuse for being there. They were a great comfort to look at. Towards the end of the story Conrad lavishes a whole page quite unexpectedly on a n African woman who has obviously been some kind of mistress to Mr. Kurtz and now presides (if I may be permitted a little liberty) like a formidable mystery over the inexorable imminence of his departure: She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent †¦. She stood looking at us without a stir and like the wilderness itself, with an air of brooding over an inscrutable purpose.This Amazon is drawn in considerable detail, albeit of a predictable nature, for two reasons. First, she is in her place and so can win Conrad's special brand of approval and second, she fulfills a structural requirement of the story: a savage counterpart to the refined, European woman who will step forth to end the story: She came forward all in black with a pale head, floating toward me in the dusk. She was in mourning †¦. She took both my hands in hers and murmured, â€Å"I had heard you were coming. â€Å"†¦ She had a mature capacity for fidelity, for belief, for suffering.The differ ence in the attitude of the novelist to these two women is conveyed in too many direct and subfile ways to need elaboration. But perhaps the most significant difference is the one implied in the author's bestowal of human expression to the one and the withholding of it from the other. It is clearly not part of Conrad's purpose to confer language on the â€Å"rudimentary souls† of Africa. In place of speech they made â€Å"a violent babble of uncouth sounds. † They â€Å"exchanged short grunting phrases† even among themselves. But most of the time they were too busy with their frenzy.There are two occasions in the book, however, when Conrad departs somewhat from his practice and confers speech, even English speech, on the savages. The first occurs when cannibalism gets the better of them: â€Å"Catch ‘im,† he snapped with a bloodshot widening of his eyes and a flash of sharp teeth — â€Å"catch ‘im. Give ‘im to us. † â€Å" To you, eh? † I asked; â€Å"what would you do with them? â€Å"Eat ‘im! † he said curtly. . . . The other occasion was the famous announcement:†Mistah Kurtz — he dead. † At first sight these instances might be mistaken for unexpected acts of generosity from Conrad.In reality they constitute some of his best assaults. In the case of the cannibals the incomprehensible grunts that had thus far served them for speech suddenly proved inadequate for Conrad's purpose of letting the European glimpse the unspeakable craving in their hearts. Weighing the necessity for consistency in the portrayal of the dumb brutes against the sensational advantages of securing their conviction by clear, unambiguous evidence issuing out of their own mouth Conrad chose the latter. As for the announcement of Mr.Kurtz's death by the â€Å"insolent black head in the doorway† what better or more appropriate finis could be written to the horror story of that wayward ch ild of civilization who willfully had given his soul to the powers of darkness and â€Å"taken a high seat amongst the devils of the land† than the proclamation of his physical death by the forces he had joined? It might be contended, of course, that the attitude to the African in Heart of Darkness is not Conrad's but that of his fictional narrator, Marlow, and that far from endorsing it Conrad might indeed be holding it up to irony and criticism.Certainly Conrad appears to go to considerable pains to set up layers of insulation between himself and the moral universe of his history. He has, for example, a narrator behind a narrator. The primary narrator is Marlow but his account is given to us through the filter of a second, shadowy person. But if Conrad's intention is to draw a cordon sanitaire between himself and the moral and psychological malaise of his narrator his care seems to me totally wasted because he neglects to hint however subtly or tentatively at an alternative frame of reference by which we may judge the actions and opinions of his characters.It would not have been beyond Conrad's power to make that provision if he had thought it necessary. Marlow seems to me to enjoy Conrad's complete confidence — a feeling reinforced by the close similarities between their two careers. Marlow comes through to us not only as a witness of truth, but one holding those advanced and humane views appropriate to the English liberal tradition which required all Englishmen of decency to be deeply shocked by atrocities in Bulgaria or the Congo of King Leopold of the Belgians or wherever.Thus Marlow is able to toss out such bleeding-heart sentiments as these: They were dying slowly — it was very clear. They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now, nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation lying confusedly in the greenish gloom. Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all the legality of time contracts , lost in uncongenial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food, they sickened, became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl away and rest.The kind of liberalism espoused here by Marlow/Conrad touched all the best minds of the age in England, Europe and America. It took different forms in the minds of different people but almost always managed to sidestep the ultimate question of equality between white people and black people. That extraordinary missionary, Albert Schweitzer, who sacrificed brilliant careers in music and theology in Europe for a life of service to Africans in much the same area as Conrad writes about, epitomizes the ambivalence. In a comment which has often been quoted Schweitzer says: â€Å"The African is indeed my brother but my junior brother. And so he proceeded to build a hospital appropriate to the needs of junior brothers with standards of hygiene reminiscent of medical practice in the days before the germ theory of disease came into being. Naturally he bec ame a sensation in Europe and America. Pilgrims flocked, and I believe still flock even after he has passed on, to witness the prodigious miracle in Lamberene, on the edge of the primeval forest. Conrad's liberalism would not take him quite as far as Schweitzer's, though. He would not use the word brother however qualified; the farthest he would go was kinship.When Marlow's African helmsman falls down with a spear in his heart he gives his white master one final disquieting look. And the intimate profundity of that look he gave me when he received his hurt remains to this day in my memory — like a claim of distant kinship affirmed in a supreme moment. It is important to note that Conrad, careful as ever with his words, is concerned not so much about distant kinship as about someone laying a claim on it. The black man lays a claim on the white man which is well-nigh intolerable. It is the laying of this claim which frightens and at the same time fascinates Conrad, â€Å"†¦ he thought of their humanity — like yours †¦. Ugly. † The point of my observations should be quite clear by now, namely that Joseph Conrad was a thoroughgoing racist. That this simple truth is glossed over in criticisms of his work is due to the fact that white racism against Africa is such a normal way of thinking that its manifestations go completely unremarked. Students of Heart of Darkness will often tell you that Conrad is concerned not so much with Africa as with the deterioration of one European mind caused by solitude and sickness.They will point out to you that Conrad is, if anything, less charitable to the Europeans in the story than he is to the natives, that the point of the story is to ridicule Europe's civilizing mission in Africa. A Conrad student informed me in Scotland that Africa is merely a setting for the disintegration of the mind of Mr. Kurtz. Which is partly the point. Africa as setting and backdrop which eliminates the African as human fa ctor. Africa as a metaphysical battlefield devoid of all recognizable humanity, into which the wandering European enters at his peril.Can nobody see the preposterous and perverse arrogance in thus reducing Africa to the role of props for the break-up of one petty European mind? But that is not even the point. The real question is the dehumanization of Africa and Africans which this age-long attitude has fostered and continues to foster in the world. And the question is whether a novel which celebrates this dehumanization, which depersonalizes a portion of the human race, can be called a great work of art. My answer is: No, it cannot. I do not doubt Conrad's great talents.Even Heart of Darkness has its memorably good passages and moments: The reaches opened before us and closed behind, as if the forest had stepped leisurely across tile water to bar the way for our return. Its exploration of the minds of the European characters is often penetrating and full of insight. But all that ha s been more than fully discussed in the last fifty years. His obvious racism has, however, not been addressed. And it is high time it was! Conrad was born in 1857, the very year in which the first Anglican missionaries were arriving among my own people in Nigeria.It was certainly not his fault that he lived his life at a time when the reputation of the black man was at a particularly low level. But even after due allowances have been made for all the influences of contemporary prejudice on his sensibility there remains still in Conrad's attitude a residue of antipathy to black people which his peculiar psychology alone can explain. His own account of his first encounter with a black man is very revealing: A certain enormous buck nigger encountered in Haiti fixed my conception of blind, furious, unreasoning rage, as manifested in the human animal to the end of my days.Of the nigger I used to dream for years afterwards. Certainly Conrad had a problem with niggers. His inordinate love of that word itself should be of interest to psychoanalysts. Sometimes his fixation on blackness is equally interesting as when he gives us this brief description: A black figure stood up, strode on long black legs, waving long black arms. . . . as though we might expect a black figure striding along on black legs to wave white arms! But so unrelenting is Conrad's obsession. As a matter of interest Conrad gives us in A Personal Record what amounts to a companion piece to the buck nigger of Haiti.At the age of sixteen Conrad encountered his first Englishman in Europe. He calls him â€Å"my unforgettable Englishman† and describes him in the following manner: â€Å"(his) calves exposed to the public gaze . . . dazzled the beholder by the splendor of their marble-like condition and their rich tone of young ivory. . . . The light of a headlong, exalted satisfaction with the world of men. . . illumined his face. . . and triumphant eyes. In passing he cast a glance of kindly curios ity and a friendly gleam of big, sound, shiny teeth. . . his white calves twinkled sturdily. Irrational love and irrational hate jostling together in the heart of that talented, tormented man. But whereas irrational love may at worst engender foolish acts of indiscretion, irrational hate can endanger the life of the community. Naturally Conrad is a dream for psychoanalytic critics. Perhaps the most detailed study of him in this direction is by Bernard C. Meyer, M. D. In his lengthy book Dr. Meyer follows every conceivable lead (and sometimes inconceivable ones) to explain Conrad. As an example he gives us long disquisitions on the significance of hair and hair-cutting in Conrad.And yet not even one word is spared for his attitude to black people. Not even the discussion of Conrad's antisemitism was enough to spark off in Dr. Meyer's mind those other dark and explosive thoughts. Which only leads one to surmise that Western psychoanalysts must regard the kind of racism displayed by Co nrad absolutely normal despite the profoundly important work done by Frantz Fanon in the psychiatric hospitals of French Algeria. Whatever Conrad's problems were, you might say he is now safely dead. Quite true. Unfortunately his heart of darkness plagues us still.Which is why an offensive and deplorable book can be described by a serious scholar as â€Å"among the half dozen greatest short novels in the English language. † And why it is today the most commonly prescribed novel in twentieth-century literature courses in English Departments of American universities. There are two probable grounds on which what I have aid so far may be contested. The first is that it is no concern of fiction to please people about whom it is written. I will go along with that. But I am not talking about pleasing people.I am talking about a book which parades in the most vulgar fashion prejudices and insults from which a section of mankind has suffered untold agonies and atrocities in the past a nd continues to do so in many ways and many places today. I am talking about a story in which the very humanity of black people is called in question. Secondly, I may be challenged on the grounds of actuality. Conrad, after all, did sail down the Congo in 1890 when my own father was still a babe in arms. How could I stand up more than fifty years after his death and purport to contradict him?My answer is that as a sensible man I will not accept just any traveler's tales solely on the grounds that I have not made the journey myself. I will not trust the evidence even off man's very eyes when I suspect them to be as jaundiced as Conrad's. And we also happen to know that Conrad was, in the words of his biographer, Bernard C. Meyer, â€Å"notoriously inaccurate in the rendering of his own history. † But more important by far is the abundant testimony about Conrad's savages which we could gather if we were so inclined from other sources and which might lead us to think that these people must have had other occupations besides erging into the evil forest or materializing out of it simply to plague Marlow and his dispirited band. For as it happened, soon after Conrad had written his book an event of far greater consequence was taking place in the art world of Europe. This is how Frank Willett, a British art historian, describes it: Gaugin had gone to Tahiti, the most extravagant individual act of turning to a non-European culture in the decades immediately before and after 1900, when European artists were avid for new artistic experiences, but it was only about 1904-5 that African art began to make its distinctive impact.One piece is still identifiable; it is a mask that had been given to Maurice Vlaminck in 1905. He records that Derain was ‘speechless' and ‘stunned' when he saw it, bought it from Vlaminck and in turn showed it to Picasso and Matisse, who were also greatly affected by it. Ambroise Vollard then borrowed it and had it cast in bronze. . . The revolution of twentieth century art was under way! The mask in question was made by other savages living just north of Conrad's River Congo. They have a name too: the Fang people, and are without a doubt among the world's greatest masters of the sculptured form.The event Frank Willett is referring to marks the beginning of cubism and the infusion of new life into European art, which had run completely out of strength. The point of all this is to suggest that Conrad's picture of the people of the Congo seems grossly inadequate even at the height of their subjection to the ravages of King Leopold's lnternational Association for the Civilization of Central Africa. Travelers with closed minds can tell us little except about themselves. But even those not blinkered, like Conrad with xenophobia, can be astonishing blind.Let me digress a little here. One of the greatest and most intrepid travelers of all time, Marco Polo, journeyed to the Far East from the Mediterranean in the thi rteenth century and spent twenty years in the court of Kublai Khan in China. On his return to Venice he set down in his book entitled Description of the World his impressions of the peoples and places and customs he had seen. But there were at least two extraordinary omissions in his account. He said nothing about the art of printing, unknown as yet in Europe but in full flower in China.He either did not notice it at all or if he did, failed to see what use Europe could possibly have for it. Whatever the reason, Europe had to wait another hundred years for Gutenberg. But even more spectacular was Marco Polo's omission of any reference to the Great Wall of China nearly 4,000 miles long and already more than 1,000 years old at the time of his visit. Again, he may not have seen it; but the Great Wall of China is the only structure built by man which is visible from the moon! Indeed travelers can be blind. As I said earlier Conrad did not originate the image of Africa which we find in h is book.It was and is the dominant image of Africa in the Western imagination and Conrad merely brought the peculiar gifts of his own mind to bear on it. For reasons which can certainly use close psychological inquiry the West seems to suffer deep anxieties about the precariousness of its civilization and to have a need for constant reassurance by comparison with Africa. If Europe, advancing in civilization, could cast a backward glance periodically at Africa trapped in primordial barbarity it could say with faith and feeling: There go I but for the grace of God.Africa is to Europe as the picture is to Dorian Gray — a carrier onto whom the master unloads his physical and moral deformities so that he may go forward, erect and immaculate. Consequently Africa is something to be avoided just as the picture has to be hidden away to safeguard the man's jeopardous integrity. Keep away from Africa, or else! Mr. Kurtz of Heart of Darkness should have heeded that warning and the prowli ng horror in his heart would have kept its place, chained to its lair. But he foolishly exposed himself to the wild irresistible allure of the jungle and lo! he darkness found him out. In my original conception of this essay I had thought to conclude it nicely on an appropriately positive note in which I would suggest from my privileged position in African and Western cultures some advantages the West might derive from Africa once it rid its mind of old prejudices and began to look at Africa not through a haze of distortions and cheap mystifications but quite simply as a continent of people — not angels, but not rudimentary souls either — just people, often highly gifted people and often strikingly successful in their enterprise with life and society.But as I thought more about the stereotype image, about its grip and pervasiveness, about the willful tenacity with which the West holds it to its heart; when I thought of the West's television and cinema and newspapers, a bout books read in its schools and out of school, of churches preaching to empty pews about the need to send help to the heathen in Africa, I realized that no easy optimism was possible. And there was, in any case, something totally wrong in offering bribes to the West in return for its good opinion of Africa. Ultimately the abandonment of unwholesome thoughts must be its own and only reward.Although I have used the word willful a few times here to characterize the West's view of Africa, it may well be that what is happening at this stage is more akin to reflex action than calculated malice. Which does not make the situation more but less hopeful. The Christian Science Monitor, a paper more enlightened than most, once carried an interesting article written by its Education Editor on the serious psychological and learning problems faced by little children who speak one language at home and then go to school where something else is spoken.It was a wide-ranging article taking in Spanis h-speaking children in America, the children of migrant Italian workers in Germany, the quadrilingual phenomenon in Malaysia, and so on. And all this while the article speaks unequivocally about language. But then out of the blue sky comes this: In London there is an enormous immigration of children who speak Indian or Nigerian dialects, or some other native language. I believe that the introduction of dialects which is technically erroneous in the context is almost a reflex action caused by an instinctive desire of the writer to downgrade the discussion to the level of Africa and India.And this is quite comparable to Conrad's withholding of language from his rudimentary souls. Language is too grand for these chaps; let's give them dialects! In all this business a lot of violence is inevitably done not only to the image of despised peoples but even to words, the very tools of possible redress. Look at the phrase native language in the Science Monitor excerpt. Surely the only native language possible in London is Cockney English. But our writer means something else — something appropriate to the sounds Indians and Africans make!Although the work of redressing which needs to be done may appear too daunting, I believe it is not one day too soon to begin. Conrad saw and condemned the evil of imperial exploitation but was strangely unaware of the racism on which it sharpened its iron tooth. But the victims of racist slander who for centuries have had to live with the inhumanity it makes them heir to have always known better than any casual visitor even when he comes loaded with the gifts of a Conrad.